To celebrate the end of 2025, we are revisiting some of our favorite comics that were published this year. 

Partisan 

TKO Studios; $16.99 

When TKO first launched writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Epting’s Sara, it was offered as a complete boxed set of the six comic issues and a trade paperback. They featured solid production values and were oversized compared to most current comics. They were later followed by a beautiful hardcover edition. 

Partisan, while a very different story from Ennis and Epting, is a spiritual successor or sequel to Sara. Both deal with women swept up in circumstances beyond their control on the Soviet side of World War II, and both confront the brutality of war, the totalitarian nature of the state, and the price of hoping for a better future. 

Wonderfully illustrated and rich with characters and dialogue, Partisan is unsentimentally brutal, yet moments of humanity shine brightly amidst the horrors that confront Aleksandra, a blacksmith’s wife, when the German invade. She leaves to go fight the invaders, but that leaves her to protect their children.  

The journey is far from clean-cut. 

She, her children, and fellow survivors witness horror after horror as they strive to survive moment by moment.  

As we saw with Sara, Ennis and Epting make a powerful team. The result is not light reading, but it’s as captivating as it gets. 

–J.C. Vaughn